EdTech Ripples

What an informative and useful workshop! Two thumbs up to both the presenters! We were split into two groups, but I took a little time to pop into the other room and could see that they were just as actively involved as we were.

As I considered how to begin this blog post, it came to mind that although this was a “tech session”, the most important part was the chance to connect with other TEACHERS! That’s really what a Professional Development Day is all about… sharing TEACHER knowledge, experiences, and aspirations. The teachers from my school ranged from Grades 2 to 5, so we don’t always have the chance to actually work together. Our presenter, James, is well known for his boundless enthusiasm and fun sense of humour, so there was plenty of opportunity for us to share some laughs. Our little group has made a new bond now… we ARE the TLI group! Rather than working in isolation in our classrooms, we’ll be much more open to sharing each other’s struggles… and successes… as we explore new avenues of teaching.

What was my most important learning? Well, Jane and her “old school smarts” have done me in again! She went home with a notebook of ideas, laughing at how in her last workshop, she was the only one with a real pen and paper. I decided to type my notes in MSWord, however, I inadvertently saved the file to my school account instead of my actual laptop. Hmmm…. I can’t access the school account at home! Sigh! So I’m spending the morning investigating online storage facilities (eg. dropbox, Skydrive, the Cloud) so that I can access my notes anywhere. In the end, I know will be happy with my choice of keeping notes, but for now there is a lesson to be learned… don’t give up something that works for you just because it’s not the most “modern” choice.

What did we learn at the workshop?… everything from how to get the laptop turned on and working for the newbies, to MSOffice howto’s such as organizing your Outlook inbox and setting up group lists (distribution lists), and the location of some useful local computer shops. At the end, we enjoyed an inspiring demonstration of podcasting and heard some anecdotes from James’ Grade 8 class.

I was able to help out a bit during the day, but I also got some new tips myself, and the inspiration to revisit some ideas that I haven’t done in a long time! One of these is “OneNote”. I remember Brian Kuhn highly recommending this application quite a long time ago, but after Friday’s workshop, I’m quite excited about using it myself! I have used “Pageflakes” and “Delicious” as online ways to collect links I find in subject areas, but I love the way “OneNote” can collect links, text, images… pretty well everything… in an appealing visual way. (BTW, for some peculiar reason, I simply LOVE indexing and cross-referencing, so this is right up my alley!)

An additional plus to the workshop is that there was considerable use of online videos, created by the presenters, which are now accessible to review at our leisure. I’m sure that making these videos helped our presenters really clarify the procedures in their own minds… which puts a little light bulb over MY head…!!! What if I had MY class do a little video on some of OUR Grade 2 learning! Whew! That’s “heady stuff”, isn’t it. However, I know I have seen exactly those sorts of videos “somewhere” on Edublogs with very young children. Oh gosh, I’d better get OneNote set up so that I can get these ideas down!

So much to do and explore… and so little time!

September is here and once again the adage “too much to do and too little time” applies! I’m sooo excited about sooo many things… hmmm… that tells me it’s going to be a GREAT year! (If I can just organize myself and focus on what is a “must do” instead of what is a “want to do”!)  I do “want”, however, to get back to updating this blog and I have the perfect reason… 6 of our teachers received a Dell laptop and we are attending our first workshop at the upcoming ProD day!

I have my own laptop at home, so I am familiar with using one, but the school has only recently added a wireless hub so I have stuck to using my (personal) desktop computer at school.  There are so many restrictions and “red tape” to using a district computer, that when I upgraded my home computer, I brought the old one to use at school.  (For example, we are not allowed to add or choose our own software at school.) I originally said that I would let someone else have the 6th laptop, but our principal said that most of our teachers wanted to wait until the next laptops come.  Additionally, he was hoping that I would be the “go to” person for the laptop initiative at our school.  There… doesn’t that sound like a good excuse to get a new laptop???

I have to say that I am absolutely THRILLED with the portability of a laptop in the classroom.  Last year I bought a horribly expensive long cable so that my desktop computer could be attached to a projector which needed to be in a certain spot to fit on the pull-down screen.  In order to use it, I had to squash behind my desktop CPU to undo the monitor and attach the cable, then bring my wireless keyboard and mouse over to the projector because I could only view the picture on the screen (the monitor was now blank).  Afterward, everything had to be put back again.  I was excited to be able to show my students webpages on a large screen, but the setup was a real nuisance .  WELL… on the first day of receiving the laptop, I was able to roll out my projector, attach the laptop and VOILA, we were looking at the classroom webpage!  Just like that!

Something I am looking forward to learning about at the workshop is Smartboard-like applications .  When the laptop is turned on, it immediately tells me that it can’t find a Smartboard… how rude to remind me that we don’t have any at our school!!  However, an interesting little menu bar/toolbox appears on the side of my laptop screen and that indicates  that there may still be some applications I can use.

After the workshop, I will blog about the successes we achieve and the impediments we run into. The six of us are at various levels of tech. comfort and range from Gr 3 to Gr. 5 teachers.  I had to laugh when a teacher from another school said how fast her new laptop is, after hearing from one of our “Mac users” say how slow the new laptop is!  It’s all a matter of perspective.  (I plan on finding out what “cool things” my friend’s Mac does and then trying to reproduce them on a Dell!)  Hopefully some of our 6 teachers in this first initiative will add their own comments to this blog!

 Let’s see whether other readers have laptops in their classroom.

I will be interested to see the results!